


Parable of the Forgiving Father

by Soheil



Category: Prodigal Son (TV 2019)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Role Reversal, Bit Dark, Gen, Kid!Malcolm, Murder, Pre-Canon
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-03-08
Updated: 2020-03-08
Packaged: 2021-02-28 17:14:31
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,438
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23060770
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Soheil/pseuds/Soheil
Summary: It wouldn’t be a stretch to say that homicide appears to be the only thing keeping him sane.Comitting, not solving.
Relationships: Malcolm Bright & Ainsley Whitly, Malcolm Bright & Jessica Whitly, Malcolm Bright & Martin Whitly
Comments: 6
Kudos: 51





	Parable of the Forgiving Father

_“This brother of yours was dead and is alive again; he was lost and is found.” - Luke 15:11-32_

The day he kills for the first time, is when he starts dying on the inside. He doesn’t tell anyone. Who would believe him? Worse yet, who would understand him?

 _No one,_ the voice whispers in his head, and his hand shakes. It did that a lot, those days.

It’s the hand he used.

He takes great care in scrubbing his fingernails, making sure all of the coppery residue is gone from his hands. He can still feel it there, sometimes. He knows it isn’t really there, but that doesn’t stop his hand from shaking. 

* * *

They know something, he knows they do. He doesn’t think he could stand it if they knew. If they knew what he was, they wouldn’t understand. 

If he was being honest, he still didn’t understand.

He just didn’t want his family to look at him the same way he looked at himself in the mirror. But everyday, a part of him chips away, shaping him into a statue he can’t recognize.

It’s only a matter of time before other people notice too, and he doesn’t know what he’ll do then. As long as they look at him the same, he thinks, everything will be fine.

* * *

 _Everything will be fine._ It’s a mantra he’s starting to repeat. He’s been having more nightmares lately, and there’s not much he can do to stop it. It’s been a while since his last kill, and the bodies still haven’t been found.

Regret isn’t really an emotion he feels, but he guesses he feels...disappointed.

The victims deserved to be found.

* * *

He doesn’t really like to think of himself as a killer. It doesn’t tell a lot about who he is. It doesn’t tell anyone that he likes mint chocolate chip ice cream, or spending time with Ainsley. He doesn’t like to think of himself as a savior either. He knows that ending a life is a decision not to be taken lightly, he knows he needs to be careful every step he makes.

If he starts to question himself, then he starts to make mistakes. He would start to mess up, and they can’t have that.

They can’t have that at all.

* * *

Later, they might ask him _why_. It’s questions like these that keep him up at night, sometimes. If he got caught, how would it happen? Would it be his family that sold him out? Maybe a stranger, who noticed something was wrong? Would they put him in jail? What would the world think of him?

He didn’t think he wanted to go to jail.

Surely, it would be easy to just stop. 

But it’s part of him now, as hardwired in his DNA as his brown hair and blue-green eyes.

* * *

His name is Malcolm Whitly.

He’s almost ten years old. 

And he hasn’t killed that many people, not really, but it wouldn’t be a stretch to say that homicide appears to be the only thing keeping him sane.

Comitting, not solving.

* * *

He’s been reading more lately. The kids at the new private school haven’t been kind to him, but they haven’t been mean either. It isn’t their fault he’s a few years younger, and therefore, at least two levels down in “coolness”, as he wasn informed by a fellow 8th grader. He’s already read all the classics, so he decides to take a dive into the advanced sections of the library. 

It’s been one week, and he’s already read “Serial Profiling: A Study of Killers” cover-to-cover, three times.

It _fascinates_ him.

According to the author, every killer was made somewhere. They were the result of an abusive childhood, traumatic incidents, or mental illness. Other than a mother who drinks too much, and a father too absorbed in his work, Malcolm doesn’t think his life is all that bad.

But people like this, people who commit these crimes and expect to get away with it? They deserve to die. It’s one of the only things he’s sure of. He kills to help people, and only to hurt the ones who have done harm. It takes a lot of time, and planning, but he’s smart. He uses his father’s notes, which are definitely more detailed than they should be. A cocktail of drugs, combined with a charming ten year old, and a quick death.

He’s not like them. He makes it quick. He makes sure he’s not wrong. It’s more than any of them deserve.

It’s a lonely life, but it's the one he’s chosen to take.

But he was made, and he’s determined to find out how.

* * *

The police have started catching on. He’s relieved.

The criminals’ families will finally get some closure. When he had first started out, he hadn’t realized that his actions would have consequences. It had almost seemed like a game, seeing how much he could get away with. He’s hidden the victims with notes, typed up in a generic font, on the library computer, just in case. The notes chronicle the crimes of the individual, the painstaking and extensive research he had to do before he decided to choose that specific person.

He wonders why the police didn’t mention all of that in their report. It could help them solve more crimes.

He knows he’s not a hero. Heroes are the ones that catch the criminals. He’s just the one that stops them.

* * *

The press have given him a name. He supposes its been long enough, but that doesn’t stop him from letting a small smile curl across his face. If they had called him “The Crime Killer '' or something strange like that, he would have been annoyed, but this? 

This fits. He uses a syringe with a cocktail of sedatives every time.

He wields his profession like his namesake, cutting out the infected parts of society as precisely as a scalpel. 

* * *

The Surgeon strikes again that night.

* * *

He’s just a kid, and he’s scared. He doesn’t get why, but according to his mother, he still has to go to school. There’s going to be an assembly today, on how to stay safe when walking home from school, and when playing on the playground. He doesn’t get it. He has nothing to be afraid of.

Yet he is.

He’s afraid of the past, of what’s he’s done, of who he’s become.

He’s afraid of the future, of who he’ll change into, of what will happen to him.

He can’t go on like this forever. But at the same time, he can’t stop. Sooner or later, he’s going to slip up, and it’s going to cost them.

It’s going to cost them all.

* * *

It’s two months in when someone is starting to get suspicious, and of all people, it’s Ainsley.

“Why did you come home late today?” she asks him, face scrunching up as if something is wrong.

Of course, something _is_ wrong, but she’s not to know that.

So he shrugs and says, “Ains, my school always gets out at this time. I’ll play with you later, I’m going to take a shower now.”

Ainsley nods, but her face is still scrunched up, and for the first time, Malcolm regrets what he’s doing.

* * *

“He’s not talking enough in class,” his teacher says, speaking to Mother during the parent-teacher classes, “I know we all know that Malcolm is a very bright young man, but if he doesn’t participate in class, we’re going to have to move him back down a few grades!”

Malcolm sighs and turns the pages in his notebook, staring at the anatomical drawings he’s gotten his father to sketch. He might be a doctor someday, he thinks, or a police officer. He likes feeling like he’s made a difference, like he’s making the world a better place.

Of course, that didn’t matter if he didn’t pass his classes.

He couldn’t hear Mother’s response to the teacher, only the fact that it was quiet, and that it was cutting. The response came swiftly after.

“Of course, Mrs. Whitly,” then, a bit nervously, “I’m sorry for overstepping.”

Jessica Whitly steps into the hall, a regal expression on her face. For all Malcolm could tell, his mother lived on the top of the world, and she was good at it.

“Come on, Malcolm!” she called, “The conference is over.”

Macolm snaps his book shut and smiles, slightly.

He’s already on top of the world, and changing it.

He doesn’t need to be any more than who he already is.

* * *

It’s been four months now, and he’s finally gotten into a rhythm. Of course, he doesn’t kill every day, but maybe once or twice a month, less if he’s being careful. He’s started going after the heavy hitters now, and it’s honestly a bit refreshing. 

For one, the criminal classes rarely report a murder, and he’s learned to use that against them.

For another, everyone underestimates a ten year old boy.

His ruse is simple enough. Get them isolated, get them relaxed, get them killed.

Father always said the simple plans were the best plans. Malcolm isn’t sure what he’d think about this, but honestly, Father helps a lot.

Of course, he doesn't always know he’s helping, but just standing with him in the basement, listening to him talk about paralysis and nerve receptors and pressure points helps.

It makes him more effective.

It makes him the surgeon.

* * *

He makes his first big mistake at seven months. He’s heading home, pleased with himself after a kill, when an elderly lady who lives across the street spots him and demands to know what he’s doing in such a suspicious part of town.

He freezes for a second in panic, then lets tears well in his eyes. He spins a tale about wandering off and getting lost, about a missed bus stop and a lost ticket. She doesn’t seem to be listening to anything he says, but he says it anyway. He never knows who might be listening.

She takes him home the long way, because its the only way she knows, and Malcolm wants to tell her that he’s going to be home late now, to get take the first left instead of going all the way down the street, but he can’t change his alibi now. So he sticks to it, and walks home.

Unsurprisingly, home is chaos. Mother is on the phone with the police station, and Father is pacing back and forth anxiously, checking his watch every few seconds. They don’t hear him come in, but when they see him, there are shrieks and even tears all around.

“Where were you?” Mother asks, voice shaking after holding him in a tight hug, “We were just about to send search parties out.”

“I got lost,” Malcolm says simply, and it’s not untrue. If he had come home on his own, he would have been here literal hours ago. Father is thanking the elderly neighbor as if she’s saved his life, clasping her hands in his. He watches them for a second before Mother sighs, drawing his attention back.

“Malcolm, from now on, I want you to walk straight home from school. Do you understand?”

Malcolm nods, then moves to go upstairs, but his mother isn’t done.

“And Malcolm?”

“Yes, Mother?”

“You’re grounded. We just want to make sure you stay safe.”

* * *

The Surgeon, killer and scourge New York’s criminal classes, is grounded.

_Grounded._

In all senses of the word.

He has to go straight to school in the morning, and straight back in the afternoon. The criminal classes must be rejoicing.

The Surgeon disappears for a month and everyone wonders why. Has he stopped killing for good? Will he return in a few years, a few months, a few days? Has he been killed himself?

No, Malcolm wants to answer, he just made a mistake.

* * *

That had been his first mistake. This was his last one.

He couldn’t have been so stupid. There was no way.

Yet he knew he had been.

There were only four people in the whole world who had access to the Whitly family crest ring, the one he had brought for his family history project presentation.

The one he thinks he lost at the crime scene.

Before, the Surgeon could have been anyone. The police aren’t stupid. Now, they know it’s got to be one of four people.

He panics. He burns his notebooks.

He waits.

* * *

There’s a policeman at the doorbell, who introduces himself as Officer Arroyo. Malcolm nods and tries not to seem as terrified as he feels.

Father makes tea. Malcolm waits.

* * *

Martin Whitly had failed as a father. He’d failed as a part of this family, and he had failed his son. His work had been keeping him so busy that he didn’t realize what Malcolm had been doing, all these cries for help that he hadn’t noticed. He supposed he deserved that anyway.

There was no doubt that the police would find the solutions he had stashed downstairs, the drugs he had planned on selling to make a bit of quick cash. It didn’t matter if it didn’t go to the patients, if the hospital could always get more.

Some would call him heartless for that.

But he hadn’t realized Malcolm had been taking pinches of each of the sedatives, to apparently using it on the victims.

Martin would never be a serial killer, but he had thought about it more than a healthy amount. He had taken notes on it, and they were hidden in the drawer at the bottom of his desk. Unless they weren’t.

If he had been in his boy’s shoes, there were so many differ- Well, it was no use to dwell on that. Malcolm had been careful, he knew. He had raised the child that way, with the attention for detail and love of knowledge. 

So when the police officer showed up at the house later that week, he realized what Malcolm had done, and quietly accepted his fate. He knew what the man would do, and why he was here. So he calmly poured him a cup of tea, as Malcolm whispered words to the police officer, words that would surely uproot his life.

He wasn’t a serial killer, but he was the father of one. He wasn’t innocent in this whole affair. So when the pair looked back at him, he smiled, and kept making the tea, pushing the evidence downstairs out of his mind, and only thinking about Malcolm.

His bright little boy.

After all, what other father wouldn’t do anything for their son?

**Author's Note:**

> If you guys were wondering, little Malcolm's tactic was mostly to sneak up on people and inject them with the lethal chemicals he found in his dad's office.  
> This disturbed me writing it, so let me be clear: I do NOT think this is what's happening in the show, and while it would be interesting, I hope they won't say, "Oh, Malcolm was the murderer all along!". That would be sad, cause Malcolm is a good person :(
> 
> ....Or is he? (Yes, he is)
> 
> Thanks for reading, drop a comment if you thought it was interesting!


End file.
